RAIN DRAINS SOME OF THE FUN FROM DAY AT SOMERS FAIR

C With his corncob pipe, fishing rod and denim overalls, 3-year-old Kevin Koropatkin looked authentic -- and cute -- enough to win the Tom Sawyer look-alike contest Sunday at the Four Town Fair.

But the weather conspired against Kevin, his 7-year-old brother, Ryan, and a handful of other youngsters who posed as the famous Mark Twain character, and they did not get to take part in a scheduled fence-painting competition. The event was canceled.

"It was just too wet," said the boys' mother, Jean Koropatkin, who, along with her husband, Alan, had left their Glastonbury home under steel-gray skies to visit the fair.

The light rain, however, did not deter patrons of the Eastern States Exposition -- the Big E -- in West Springfield.

"We've got a lot to do inside, which is good on a rainy day," said marketing director Noreen Tassinari. She said the horse show in the fair's coliseum, the one-ring circus staged under a 170-foot-long tent, and the mall-like shopping offered in the Better Living Center were crowded.

"Of course, we did sell out of our whole stock of Big E rain ponchos this afternoon -- 7,000 of them," she said.

At Somers, the would-be whitewashers weren't the only ones who missed out.

Forty-one teams of draft horses had come prepared to show off their muscle by dragging tons of concrete at a driver's command, but the event was canceled about 4 p.m., when Robert Sandberg, who directed the drawing events, deemed the field too muddy.

"The teamsters would be in danger of falling between the horses and the bolt" attaching the team to the load, Sandberg explained.

The rain, which had kept up an intermittent pitter-patter on the tents and aluminum roofs of fair booths and concession stands since morning, had become more steady by late afternoon, although it ebbed by evening.

Sandberg did manage to complete the pony drawing contest, which began in mid-morning.

John Beattie of North Stonington beat out about six other

drivers with his brace of brown ponies named Jim and J.R. churning up the mud with their spiked horseshoes, their shoulders straining against heavy harnesses, the ponies moved a stack of concrete beams weighing 13,650 pounds 1 1/2 feet.

The slippery mud actually helped produce a record -- albeit one recorded with an asterisk -- for the event, Sandberg said. "We usually pull about 5,800 pounds," he said.

The rain clearly hurt attendance Sunday, said Judy Mercier, a spokeswoman for the Union Agricultural Society, which has organized the Four Town Fair -- Connecticut's oldest -- since 1838.

"I think people started coming out this morning, when it was just sprinkling," she said, "but when it really started coming down in the afternoon we didn't get any , although a reliable attendance estimate was not available Sunday night. Last year's four-day attendance was about 40,000.

The Four Town Fair, which had a budget of more than $50,000 this year, has been plagued by rainy weather in recent years, with the exception of 1990. But the misty, overcast Saturday and wet Sunday this year could not compare with the disaster that struck in 1989, said Assistant Treasurer Leland Hawthorne. That September, torrential rains began with the opening of the fair, limiting Thursday attendance to six. Friday's was 36.

"You know what a $50,000 operating budget does with a two-day attendance of 42?" Hawthorne asked.